


planting seeds in a garden you never get to see

by Sanctuaria



Series: Celebrating AoS Season 7 (with angst and hurt/comfort) [15]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: BBG FitzSimmons - Freeform, Closure, Deke plays with BBG, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fitzsimmons Family Feels, Funerals, Gen, Grief/Mourning, I swear I don’t have a problem guys, You Have Been Warned, how did a lemon reference end up in here???, making up for all the hugs we don’t get in canon I guess, or funeral-type things, philindaisy, season 7, season 7 finale spec fic, tears were involved in the editing of this fic, the number of hugs in this fic I swear to god
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-07
Updated: 2020-08-07
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:42:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25772284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sanctuaria/pseuds/Sanctuaria
Summary: “Enoch said that this will be the team’s last mission together.”“Well, maybe it’s time.”“You guys are my family. I don’t know who I am without you guys.”A look at what that looks like after the finale. Also, LMD!Coulson requests to be shut down.
Relationships: Deke Shaw & Skye | Daisy Johnson, Jemma Simmons & Skye | Daisy Johnson, Leo Fitz/Jemma Simmons, Melinda May & Skye | Daisy Johnson, Phil Coulson & Skye | Daisy Johnson, Phil Coulson/Melinda May, Skye | Daisy Johnson/Daniel Sousa
Series: Celebrating AoS Season 7 (with angst and hurt/comfort) [15]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1764745
Comments: 101
Kudos: 164





	planting seeds in a garden you never get to see

**Author's Note:**

> Uhm, I'm sorry in advance. 
> 
> Beta'd by the wonderful independentalto, who also accidentally came up with the title, so you can blame her for that.

Daisy follows the sound of laughter.

It’s high-pitched, sweet. Utterly foreign in the context of the dim gray hallways of the Lighthouse. These hallways are alien attacks, or learning she is the Destroyer of Worlds, or the Doctor cutting into her neck with a thin, razor-sharp scalpel while she begs him to stop.

But now…

The laughter rings out again, a peal of giggles really, and she rounds the corner into the common room to find Deke and Maisie FitzSimmons sitting on some newly-installed rug. He’s got a sock puppet in a white lab coat on one arm and what might be a monkey on the other. “That’s not what she sounds like,” Maisie squeals at him, kicking her feet through her laughter.

“Oh yeah?” Deke asks her playfully, sticking his tongue out at her and making her burst into giggles all over again. “What’s Jane Goodall supposed to sound like?”

“Like Mum!” Maisie tells him.

“I do sound like your mum, see?” Deke says in what is a genuinely horrific approximation of Simmons’s accent. He catches Daisy’s eye right as he finishes, the very tips of his ears going red, but his grin doesn’t falter. A little ways away, Fitz and Simmons are curled up on the couch, Jemma watching with a fond look on her face and Fitz playing gently with her hair as she leans against him. On the far side of the room, May and Sousa have also already gathered, talking in low voices. Waiting.

Daisy inhales a deep breath.

It’s not quite yet. There’s still time.

“No you don’t!” Maisie giggles. “Here, I’ll be Jane Goodall. You play just the monkey, ‘kay?”

“Of course,” Deke agrees, sliding off the puppet with the lab coat and handing it over.

“I’m gonna read more monkey facts first,” she informs him, dragging a book toward her from where it lay open on the rug. “I _excel_ at preparation.”

“Just like your mo—mum,” Daisy says as she comes nearer, earning herself a grin before Maisie buries her nose in the book that is larger than her head. Deke smiles dopily at her before patting the rug next to him in open invitation, and Daisy hesitantly sits down after another glance around the room.

There’s still time.

“How’re you doing?” Deke asks in a low voice, just loud enough for Daisy to catch it.

She shrugs her shoulders, unable to quite put the tumultuous feeling in her stomach into words. She’d known today was coming, of course, but it didn’t make it any less _today_. Deke gives her a soft, sympathetic look, nudging his shoulder against hers, and she accepts the comfort for what it is, leaning against him briefly though it does little to dull the rising ache in her chest.

“You two playing together, it’s cute,” she says instead, nodding towards the tuft of blonde hair visible above _1001 Facts About Primates_. She forces some semblance of a teasing smile onto her face. “If a little…weird. Relation-wise.”

“What, it’s not like she’s my mom!” Deke whispers back, faux-indignation in his gray eyes. “That time with Nana and Bobo _bumping lemons_ was completely different, new timeline and everything.” He huffs a small laugh. “We, uh, did the DNA test too, just to check. So she’s my…aunt?”

“Like I said. Still weird.” A door opens behind them, and the smile slips off of Daisy’s face before she’s even turned to look. Elena emerges from the adjoining room, Coulson following behind her. His expression is sad but nothing compared to the stony one on Elena’s. Angry, Daisy would have guessed, if she didn’t know exactly what had caused it, if she didn’t know it was just loss and grief and sadness and furiousness at the world rolled all up into one.

Elena turns back to him as Daisy pushes herself to her feet, ignoring the lump that has taken residence in her throat. There’s still time.

“Thank you, boss,” Yo-Yo says one last time, because even though Coulson isn't the boss and hasn't been for two years, it still feels like the right thing to say. She has a duffel bag slung over one shoulder, and Daisy grabs the strap of it to forestall her before she can leave. Somewhere in the background, Maisie has started reciting monkey facts, her accent an adorable mixture of English and Scottish.

“Going back to Ruben’s?” Daisy asks, even though she knows the answer. Yo-Yo nods, jaw hard, eyes somewhat softened but still blazing with a pain that is all too familiar, and Daisy pulls a stiff Elena into a hug.

Mack was a friend, a mentor, a leader, and a big brother to her, but even then she knows she has merely a fraction of Elena’s heartache.

“I’ll see you and Flint in September, though, right?” Daisy checks when she releases her. “I’ll need my right hand.”

Yo-Yo nods. “You have me.”

“You and Flint,” Daisy says softly. “Mack would have liked that.” For a moment it chokes her, the memories of losing him—the last look in his eyes when he told them to go, to run, to get somewhere safe; the look of his body after, broken and still. The $20 he’ll never get to collect, the future after S.H.I.E.L.D. he’ll never get to see.

“Yeah, he would,” Elena agrees. She squeezes Daisy’s hand once, and then goes. Turning away from the door, Daisy finds herself face to face with Coulson and looks away, eyes stinging. _Not yet._

But it’s coming, now, no matter how much her heart fights to stop it. May and Sousa rise from their chairs, walking towards them; Fitz and Simmons uncurl from the couch. “I’ll watch her,” Deke says immediately. “It’s okay, I don’t…need to be there. And she shouldn’t either.”

“Deke…” Simmons says.

“Really,” he tells her. “Don’t worry about it. Take all the time you need.”

Fitz stares at him, then takes a deep, hitched breath, fixing his eyes on the ceiling, trying to keep himself under control, to not startle Maisie. “J-Just til—”

“I’ll just…say goodbye now,” Deke says, and Fitz nods, clapping him on the back and seeming unable to say anything else.

“I’ll stay too,” says a quiet voice at Daisy’s shoulder, and she looks at Sousa.

“You don’t have to,” Daisy tells him. “Are you sure you don’t want to come?”

Sousa shakes his head, his eyes gentle. “No, it should be a family thing,” he replies. “I’ll be here if you need me…after.”

“Thank you,” Daisy says.

“Of course. I’ll just…” He glances toward the rug, where both sock puppets are back in use, dwarfing Maisie’s little arms. “…learn some facts about primates, I guess.” Sousa smiles. “Kids tend to like me, scarily-smart ones hopefully included.”

“Good with kids…good to know,” Daisy murmurs, the edges of her lips quirking upward at him. Out of the corner of her eye, she watches Deke engulf Coulson in a giant bear hug. The frenetic beating of her heart gets a little faster, Deke wiping his eyes and dropping back to the floor beside Maisie.

“So, Ms. Goodall, could you explain the difference between an ape and a gorilla?” he asks, smiling widely and nodding along as she begins to chatter away.

Her eyes slip almost unbidden to Coulson.“It’s time,” he says.

_There’s no more time._

She walks toward him on leaden feet, May falling into step beside her and FitzSimmons right behind. They pile into the Lighthouse’s elevator together, rising some ten levels to the surface exit that seldom gets used. With each floor, the tightness in Daisy’s chest grows, her heart hammering with a sense of impending finality. Fitz is carrying a retractable, lightweight pall under one arm and for a brief second Daisy considers just never stepping out of the lift at all, because she knows they won’t go forward without her. The doors open, though, bringing with them fresh air and the scent of wildflowers and the lake, and when the rest of them step out, she does too.

“Oh, this is lovely,” Jemma says as soon as their feet hit dirt. And it really is—the actual white lighthouse that the underground bunker is named for rises up behind them, while in front the waters of Lake Ontario glitter in the late afternoon sun. They begin to trek through the foliage on an old walking trail towards the coast, and for a moment it’s like old times: Fitz and Simmons are telling anecdotes about Perthshire and their time away and their _second secret wedding_ and May is discussing her plans for the new strike team training course at the Academy, Coulson’s hand in hers. Daisy finds herself swept up in the conversation too, discussing Kora and the rebuilding process in Afterlife and the possibility of opening a new S.H.I.E.L.D. base on the west coast, now that the government has stopped hunting them down. But mostly she listens and soaks in as much as she can, because with the five of them it’s almost the same as how it all began.

It’s fitting that it’s how it will end, too.

Dirt transitions to sand as they reach the shore, Lake Ontario stretching out before them in both directions. Silence falls amongst them as the small wooden pier they’re headed for grows larger in the distance, but it’s not oppressive; Simmons is slotted into Fitz’s side like a couple just out for a stroll at the beach, and May and Coulson each take one of her hands when they spy her watching to walk in a line of three, swinging her arms lightly between them.

They arrive at the pier just as the sun has started setting over the western horizon, spilling an orange glow over the small waves lapping at the shore. They stop a hundred feet or so from the pier’s edge—more of a wooden bridge than anything, now that Daisy gets a better look at it—and wordlessly form a small semi-circle in the sand. She tries not to notice that Fitz’s eyes are already wet, tries to swallow away the lump in her throat that threatens to choke her.

Coulson looks around at them all. “I’ve lived a life…” he begins, and Daisy feels a laugh bubble up in her chest despite herself at the expression on his face.

_I’ve lived a life, surrounded by heroes. None bigger than all of you._

“Multiple lives, it feels like, now,” he continues with a small smile, a moment of levity to push back at the dark on the horizon. “And it has been the greatest honor of my lives to have lived them with you.” His eyes meet Daisy’s, and she feels bands constrict tight and thick around her chest, around her heart. “To have laughed with you.” They shift to Fitz, who has silent tears staining his cheeks and whose free hand trembles in front of him. “Celebrated with you.” To Jemma, who takes Fitz’s other hand as well, cradling them both in her own. “Mourned with you.” To May, who’s looking back at him with the softest expression Daisy can ever remember seeing on her face. “Loved with you.” Fitz, Simmons, Daisy. “To have watched you grow up,” Coulson says. “To have watched you grow into a team. Our team.”

His eyes fall to each of them in turn. “You have all done amazing things. And I am so proud.” His voice shakes slightly, and Daisy’s eyes burn as she watches him wipe his with the sleeve of his suit. “And I am so grateful that I got to say goodbye, here, together, to each and every one of you. We all know too well that…not everyone gets that chance.”

“And us to you, sir,” Simmons says in a choked voice. Daisy nods, biting her lip as she feels the first tear slip hot and wet down her face. Jemma breaks from Fitz to wrap her arms around him. “Thank you for everything, sir,” she says.

Fitz stumbles forward right behind her, and as much as Daisy tries not to listen, she hears him say, “Thanks for being a better f-father than mine ever was.”

“You’re a good man, Fitz,” Coulson tells him, grasping his shoulder. They hug too. “Take your time,” he says. “After everything you’ve been through, you deserve time. And Maisie—treasure every second of it.”

“We will,” Fitz promises. “G-Goodbye, Coulson.” His hand joins with Jemma’s again, and they both step back, retreating far enough away to provide some privacy for her and May and wrapping their arms around each other.

May looks at her, and Daisy shakes her head, unable to speak. So May steps up instead, whispering something in Coulson’s ear before embracing him. They kiss, gentle and lingering, May’s arms around him and his hands threaded through her hair, and Daisy wants to look away because it’s so heartbreakingly intimate but she can’t, knowing it’s a sight she will never see again. _He’s_ a sight she will never see again.

“It’s not exactly Tahiti, Phil,” May murmurs when they pull apart, eying the sunset and the sparse beach and the lack of palm trees.

“No, but it’s family,” he replies. He reaches for her hands and brings them between them, running his thumb over her knuckles. “Take care of her,” he says, and Daisy lets out a choked sound in her throat that she cannot mask no matter how badly she doesn’t want to disrupt their moment. Their last moment.

“You know I will,” May nods. Daisy wants them to stay there holding hands forever, but after another few seconds May steps back, coming toward her, and Coulson meets her eyes.

_She’s not ready._

He approaches her instead as her feet remain leaden and immovable in the sand, a look so sad in his blue eyes that she immediately wishes she could just pull it together and be happy for him, or whatever calm emotion May is channeling right now. Anything but this sensation of being torn in two and asked to smile about it all at once. “I wrote you another letter,” he says, his voice achingly soft. “I left it in your bunk.”

She tries for levity, knowing he would like that despite the tears burning her eyes. She tries. “I need to start locking that thing; people keep putting stuff in it. Lemons…” Her throat closes up, leaving her to struggle. “…g-goodbye letters…”

“Dais,” Coulson says before folding her into his arms. She clings to him, never wanting to let go, breathing in the scent of his aftershave and freshly laundered clothes. Her heart screams at her to beg him to reconsider, to convince him to change his mind. To tell him she’s not ready and he can’t do this to her yet and they just lost Mack and everything is changing and _she’s not ready_. But they’ve had that conversation and many others over the last month since the Chronicoms were defeated and the original timeline restored, and every time he’s said no, the guilt at denying her weighing on him a little more each time. He wants this. Or, rather, he never wanted this extra few months of life she’d forced on him with a press of a button. He wants them to let him go.

She owes him a goodbye, not one more time begging him to stay. Daisy is no stranger to guilt, and she doesn’t want to add to his, any more than she already has. 

“I love you,” she chokes out instead.

“I know,” he says, and she can’t help the startled laugh that bubbles out of her chest as she swats at him. “I love you too,” he promises. “You’re going to be an amazing Director, Daisy. The best of them. You’re more than ready, and I am so proud.”

“Never better than you,” she tells him with a stubborn shake of her head, teeth biting sharp and painful into her lower lip.

He just smiles. “Take care of May.”

“Like she’ll let me.”

“She will,” he says. He grabs her hands too, encapsulating her numb fingers in his warm ones and squeezing tightly. She can feel it coming, knows what he’s going to say. “…Goodbye, Daisy.”

“Goodbye,” she manages, the word more of a gasp than anything, catching in her throat. May signals to Fitz and Simmons as Coulson presses a small device into her hand, a small rounded button on the top of it.

“When you’re ready,” he says before stepping back, completing the small circle they’ve created once again. Fitz and Simmons are still holding tight to one another, and Daisy sees May give her a nod. Coulson just watches her, an almost serene expression on his face.

Waiting.

They’re all waiting.

Waiting for her. Waiting for her to be ready.

_I already had one unnatural life extension, and I don’t want another._

Except she’ll never be ready. This is Lincoln all over again, except this time she can see it coming, this time she is _holding_ the button… _“I can’t just…I can’t just say goodbye. There’s too much I want to say.”_ There’s a lifetime of things, her lifetime, jokes about Lola and Captain America and reassurances about her leadership and late night conversations over his special grilled cheese and maybe even walking her down the aisle someday, if she ever gets there. She’s known him so much longer than she ever knew Lincoln, but the chasm of things they’ll never get to say or do or be opens up vast and wide in her chest.

Her thumb ghosts across the button, theplastic smooth and cool underneath her fingertip.

She’ll never be ready, not really.

Is anyone ever ready to lose a parent?

_I will watch all of you die, one by one. Everyone I love._

But she also can see him one last time, the lake and the sunset reflected in his eyes, the whole team around him. She can see how proud he is in the way he looks at him, how proud he is of her. How ready he is to move on, despite how much he loves them.

_Yet this is the nature of family, isn’t it? I have seen it countless times on countless worlds. People arrive, so we celebrate, and people leave us, so we grieve. We do what we can with the time in between, but the cycle is always there._

She’ll never be ready, but she is more ready than she was last time, and that has to be enough.

_You’re a part of that cycle. Like every other living thing._

One simple push of her thumb. That’s all it takes, the click of plastic underneath her fingers. She watches as his head falls forward, bowed, his eyes closing. Tears flood her vision until she can’t see anymore, until the muted reds and oranges painting the sky and the water beneath mingle into one giant wash of color. Hands touch her shoulder and then her back and then encircle around her, pulling her in, and she hugs May back like her life depends on it, grief and the strangest feeling of _relief_ crashing over her in waves.

Because he’s gone.

Because she _did it_.

May releases her and her eyes clear just in time to see Jemma removing something small and flat from the base of Coulson’s neck. With shaking hands, she hands it to May, the tiny square hardly more than a chip that contains everything Phil Coulson ever was and ever will be.

_Agent._

_Director._

_Friend._

_Mentor._

_Leader._

_Partner._

_Father._

Fitz extends the pall out to full size and carefully moves Coulson’s body onto it, laying him face up off the sand. May walks to the pier, cradling the chip in both hands. The three of them follow, Fitz on one side and Jemma on the other, sheltering Daisy between them. May stops at the end of the pier, and for a moment, Daisy can see the regret and uncertainty she feels reflected in her eyes. The last copy of _him_ , to make sure he would never get found in the future and brought back by someone who was not them, unable to power himself down, unable to have a choice.

This choice is the last gift they can ever give him, the man that gave all of them so many others.

May snaps the chip in half with a swift twist of her fingers, then lets it fall in two pieces into the water, sinking into the lake’s depths as the last rays of sunlight disappear over the horizon.

They lift the pall onto their shoulders and carry him back to the Lighthouse in silence, depositing it in the lab to be disassembled and reused for parts. A new leg for Davis, a spare set of arms for Yo-Yo when she returns… Even pieces of Coulson’s body will live on though he’s gone.

“Tai chi in the morning?” Daisy asks when May moves to split off, heading back to her bunk or the pilot’s seat of the Zephyr or wherever it is that May will go to grieve, alone.

May nods, “Five a.m.,” and Daisy knows she’s just fulfilled another promise to Coulson.

Every face turns to them when they enter the common room, Deke’s sad eyes silently asking _are you okay?_ and Sousa’s concerned ones promising that he’ll be there for her either way. Maisie, for her part, comes barreling at them, but instead of going for Fitz or Simmons, she crashes into Daisy’s legs with all the force of a small, warm cannonball, wrapping her arms around Daisy’s thighs.

“Deke told me to give you lots of hugs ‘cause you might be sad,” Maisie informs her, squeezing as hard as her little five-year-old arms can muster, “so let me know when this is enough, ‘kay?” She smiles up at her. “Da says I give the best hugs when he’s feeling sad. I don’t want you to be sad, Daisy.”

Blinking away a fresh set of tears, Daisy reaches down and hugs her. “Thank you, Maisie. I was a little sad, but you cheered me right up.”

Maisie grins at her before letting her go, moving to tug on Fitz’s arm and beginning to regale him full-speed about playtime with Deke and Sousa. “Wait a minute,” Fitz says when she pauses for breath, putting his hands on his hips and adopting a mock stern expression. Or maybe it is supposed to be actually stern; Daisy’s not entirely sure he’s capable of it when it comes to her. “Maisie Skye FitzSimmons,” Fitz says, and Daisy’s mouth falls open. “Is that chocolate smears I see on your mouth?”

Maisie giggles. “Deke said I could, Da!”

“Before dinner?” Fitz squeaks.

“Wait…Skye?” Daisy asks, turning to Jemma.

“Oh, we didn’t tell you?” her best friend asks, the barest trace of mischief—or as she would say it, _bad girl shenanigans_ —on her face. “We named her after you. Not her first name, we weren’t sure if that would be weird if the mission was successful and we saw you again, but we thought… Well, we thought you would have liked the idea of a Skye growing up safe, and happy, and loved.”

“Jemma…” Daisy engulfs her in a hug so fast that it knocks the wind out of both of them. “It’s perfect.”

“We almost made Deke godfather, but, well… Our family tree’s messy enough,” Jemma smiles after they separate, watching as Fitz joins their little circle on the carpet and receives a paper tiara to match the ones already on Deke and Sousa.

“So then who’s…?”

“Fitz and I decided we weren’t going anywhere,” Jemma says. “That we had survived so much, that we were stronger than any curse—unstoppable together, especially now that there were three of us. He had a whole speech; it was rather sweet, really. But you can put your hat in the ring for the next one.”

“Jemma!” Daisy’s voice drops to a whisper. “Are you—?”

She shakes her head, laughing slightly at Daisy’s expression. “No. But with Deke getting us all set up in Perthshire and everything settling down… I always wanted a sibling.” She grabs Daisy’s hand, lacing their fingers together. “If it’s a boy, Fitz and I decided…we’re going to have his middle name be Philip.”

Daisy stares at her with a sense of dawning wonder, then squeezes her hand, holding tight. “He would have loved that.” She watches Maisie pass out little cups of pink plastic for ‘tea’ to Deke and Sousa with her pinky sticking out, overcome with the sudden, strange sense that she is watching the future happen, that it is here, unfolding before her eyes. The future has always seemed like a dark, unknowable thing looming over her, promising death and loss and changes to things she’s not ready to face. This…this is the future that they fought for, that some of them died for, that Daisy will continue to fight for as long as she’s Director and probably longer than that.

_It’s more than a team, and you know it._

Maisie Skye FitzSimmons is the future.

_Carry on this mission and cherish it, for it will be your last mission together._

Parts of it may have died, but _family_ remains, and the people that leave are never truly gone.

_You've always been capable of more than you imagined._

_And I am so proud._

**Author's Note:**

> Any and all feedback appreciated :)
> 
> Also, if any of you want to participate in this casual "let's make predictions about the finale" thing I put together so we can all guess who lives/dies/retires to Perthshire and then laugh/cry at ourselves when we're all very wrong, you can fill out the sheet [here](https://forms.gle/1kRDiBMpn2prUwNj9) :) I went a little overboard on some of it, but hey, whether or not Flint gets his tacos is a very important question that needs answering :P
> 
> Otherwise, feel free to scream at me about the finale below, as always.


End file.
